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The Soltis Lab

Scientists and students in the Soltis Lab are currently working with a variety of technologies to investigate mechanisms of speciation, evolutionary relationships and character evolution in flowering and land plants at all taxonomic levels. Current projects include the study of higher level phylogenetic relationships and character evolution in the angiosperms, floral evolution, the genetic and genomic consequences of polyploidy, conservation genetics of rare plants, phylogeography, and biogeography. Please explore our website for more information on our research.

Mayrose et al. (2011) and Arrigo and Barker (2012) concluded that neopolyploid lineages diversify more slowly than the diploid lineages from which they arise. We expressed concerns about this statement in Soltis et al. (2014a) to which Mayrose et al. (2014) responded. This article continues the discussion. We demonstrate a statistical problem with the original analysis which has not been discussed before. We point out that restricting to cpDNA data does not resolve the reticulation issue, contrary to Mayrose et al. (2014). Furthermore, we discuss some clade-specific problems with the data set used in the original analysis.

Congratulations to Jacob Landis who won the FLMNH Student Research Exhibit Best Poster award or 2014-2015! Jacob’s poster reported on the development of outreach activities working with high school students to conduct plant systematics and forensics research experiences.

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